Review Time – Gears Of War 3 Campaign Mode

Well, I’ve just sat down and started playing Gears Of War 3 so I’m going to review as I go. The game fired up and did a quick update and then I was in. One thing I liked, straight away, is that there’s a video you can choose to watch which catches you up to the current events. It talks about everything from Gears 1 to current day – 18 months after the events of Gears 2 – with a nice cut-scene.

I checked that out, naturally, and then started the campaign mode.

Odd…I’ve seen this before…Fenix sitting in a cell and someone telling Jack to rip the door. Deja Vu!

I won’t spoil what happens next but after that, we’re in story mode. The game goes through a quick tutorial and we’re off to the races.

I can tell you that the graphics look updated. Everything is a bit more crisp, more clean. I can also tell you that the game has multiple play modes for campaign mode. I saw standard and arcade mode but since there’s no manual in the box, only some stickers, you’d have to find out what that means by looking online, except you’re reading this so I’ll tell you.

Arcade mode is a co-op mode wherein players compete to rack up the highest number of kills, revivals, etc. It’s a nice new edge to the game which should add a lot of replayability.

I’m noticing some texture pop on locusts and COG, mostly during quick cut scenes. This is a known issue with Unreal Engine 3 but it’s surprising, and disappointing, that they haven’t been able to get past it yet…It’s been out forever. I’m not going to say it’s terrible because it’s not. It IS noticeable, though.

About 30 minutes in to the game I got invited into a party for some horde mode. As with Gears 2, this mode absolutely makes the game. In the new horde mode, you’re able to collect money which you can then spend on barriers, ammo, weapons and buying your way back in to a round after being killed.

HOTNESS!

There’s also a bunch of new enemies to fight with. Wait until the first time you see the big armored centipede thing. You’re liable to make dribblets. We all did. I won’t tell you how to kill it, I’ll let you figure that out on your own but suffice it to say it’ll do some pretty serious damage until you figure it out.

Back to the campaign, I’m not going to spoil anything but I will tell you this – I’m not too far in to it but, so far, it’s standard Gears fare. The graphics are tight, the gameplay is tight and things unfold in a very Gears-ey fashion. Again, I’m not far in to it but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m suitably impressed and have no problem at all giving this one a fairly healthy score even though it does have some small issues and there’s still some game modes I haven’t tried out yet. If it weren’t for the texture pop I’d actually consider giving it a 10 but that breaks it a little so…